


a promise you never spoke

by Edgedancer



Category: Wheel of Time - Robert Jordan
Genre: And He Gets One!, Book 4: The Shadow Rising, Fluff and Angst, Friendship, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Rand al'Thor Needs a Hug
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-02-28 21:22:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,332
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23083918
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edgedancer/pseuds/Edgedancer
Summary: I won’t leave you no matter what, Rand had told him, and he’d kept his word for as long as it was in his power.Of course, Mat had made no such promise.(In the Stone of Tear, Mat has a dream, an encounter, and a shift in perspective.)
Relationships: Mat Cauthon & Rand al'Thor, but can definitely be read as pre Mat/Rand if you want
Comments: 10
Kudos: 43





	a promise you never spoke

**Author's Note:**

> everyone in the books: wow Rand is a disaster! Rand is an arrogant ass! Rand is dangerous!  
> me: maybe so, but also someone please give my boy a hug he is _suffering_
> 
> (also the caemlyn road stuff was so damn soft i couldn't not bring it up. sorry)
> 
> This is my first ever fic for the wheel of time-- let me know how the voices and stuff turned out!

_The world shone a brilliant white, bleeding to pulsing, searing red around the edges. As Mat stumbled through the haze, the swirling, burning brightness seemed to coalesce into indistinct shapes, words pouring from them in echoing whispers._

_Mat tried to flee, but the murmurs and the eye-searing emptiness battered in at him from all sides, shoving and tripping at his heels until he fell to the floor, trembling. Closing his eyes only made the white flood with throbbing blood-red, and he curled up, arms clamped around his head in a futile attempt to block out the terrible light and the terrible whispers._

_But the whispers crept through anyway, and a familiar (feared, distrusted,_ hated) _voice made him stare up reflexively._ _The shape of a woman formed out of the blaze, one hand outstretched as though in a caress. He sat frozen in the grip of panicked fury, dreading her touch but unable to make himself move._

_Hot lava poured through his veins from the place her skin met his, and he twisted in agony, throat locking up to trap his scream in his open mouth. He lashed out in madness, pain, fury, the ruby glinting above his fingers as the dagger swung toward that indistinct, ageless face._

_But a strong grip, not burning but tight as a vise, halted his hand in its path. He pushed, straining, still curled up tightly even as all of his strength poured into his arm. If only he could kill her, he thought desperately, surely those terrible fires, those terrible whispers, will dissolve into cool, silent shadow?_

_The grip on his wrist shifted,_ changed _, and suddenly Mat was pulled to his feet. The new hand moved him where the other had held him still, but somehow it felt gentler even as it dragged him into a stumbling run. Mat realized that the woman was gone, that he no longer held the dagger, and panicked—but his other hand found its familiar shape tucked into a belt at his waist._

_He felt cold, now, and soaking wet, but blinding flame still filled the world around him, and the whispers nipped at his heels. The hand around his wrist pulled him away from them, and he stumbled after it desperately, gratefully, even as the soaking rain loosened the other's grip until it started to slip. The other feared the whispers too, he knew, and he tried his best to keep up, to feel his way and avoid stumbling, but the hand kept tugging, urging him to go faster._

_"Rand," he gasped, recognizing the hand at the same moment that he named its owner. "You won't leave me, will you? If I can't keep up?"_

_He sounded pathetic, he knew, but the thought of being left alone with the whispers and the flames terrified him beyond all reason. He knew,_ knew _without any reason but with complete certainty_ , _that alone, he would be consumed._

_"I won't leave you." Rand's voice was afraid too, but his tone was firm, and his warm hold on Mat's wrist even firmer. "I won't leave you no matter what."_

Thunder crashed, and Mat woke.

“Light burn me,” he gasped, and then laughed.

Of all the nightmares Mat had had since he’d left Emond’s Field, that had been far from the worst. Not only had it included no Forsaken or even remembered Shadowspawn, but it had ended not with a spike of panic as most nightmares did, but with a wash of comfort at those last words.

At _Rand’s_ last words, Mat recalled, silently acknowledging the source of his lingering disquiet. He had been avoiding Rand—avoiding the _Dragon Reborn_ , really—the entire time he’d been in the Stone.

He was hardly going to stop because a bad dream, of course, but the uneasiness ate at him, and he sighed and levered himself out of bed. He could take a walk, he decided as he pulled on his boots. He’d slept in clothes and coat despite the heat in Tear, too wary of the tension tugging at the very air in the Stone to risk assassins catching him undressed in the night. Transferring some of the knives hidden throughout the room into his clothes, he picked up his quarterstaff before leaving the room.

Mat tried to remember when he became so cautious. He’d never considered himself especially suspicious back in the Two Rivers. He’d always been far shrewder than most people thought, had learned from his father to consider all angles and listen to what men meant instead of what they said— but all the same, there had been some truth to the common knowledge that Mat Cauthon’s too-quick thinking got him into the sort of trouble any sensible person would have avoided easily.

 _Not that I don’t still get into that kind of trouble,_ Mat mused ruefully, nodding to a servant he passed sweeping the hallway.

But the trouble he got himself into these days was different. Not only was getting himself trapped in the Stone of bloody Tear a sight bigger trouble than getting on Mistress Luhan’s bad side for covering her kitchen in flour, but Mat had seen and stewed over the idiocy of every decision that had brought him here. All the way back in Caemlyn, Mat had known that the safer option would have been to go anywhere _but_ Tear no matter what mad plots he’d overheard. He’d fulfilled the terms of his promise with the girls; he could have just gone back to the Two Rivers and stayed out of the way of battles and Aes Sedai for the rest of his life.

Except, of course, Mat couldn’t have done any such thing. Quite aside from the fact that he seemed to be drawn back to Rand’s side like a top on a bloody string, leaving Egwene and Nynaeve in danger when he could have done something would have eaten away at him for the rest of his life.

So maybe he wasn’t especially careful even now. But the fact remained that somewhere in that stretch of time where his memories were full of as many holes as an old cloak the moths had been at, Mat’s entire life had seemed to shift—and if he still thought adventure was around every corner, it felt more like a lurking assassin than an opportunity. And what was more likely: that the entire world had taken a step to the left, or that he himself had taken a step to the right?

Of course, with the Dragon being reborn for true, the world really had shifted.

Perhaps he should go see Thom. Mat wasn’t sure how late it was, but he’d found that the old gleeman was often awake at surprising hours of the night, and always willing to play a game of stones—though Mat hadn’t yet managed to talk him into a dice game. Still, stones demanded concentration, and Mat did need something to occupy his mind.

He looked up, realizing that he had been letting his feet carry him without a thought to where he was going, and froze. Tall stone columns rose from the stone floor, low torchlight seeming to flicker beneath their polished red faces rather than merely reflecting. Mat whirled, intent on finding the exit as quickly as possible, but instead his eyes landed on the dais at the center of the room, and he sucked in a breath.

There, at the steps leading to the plinth at the center of the Heart of the Stone, sat the Dragon Reborn himself, gazing distantly at one of the columns, left hand steadying a crystal sword laid across his lap.

Mat wondered for a moment if he was dreaming again. He’d had enough dreams like this in the weeks before the battle in the Stone, and surely he hadn’t been allowed to simply wander into the Heart? Then again, the defenders of the Stone knew he was associated with the bloody Dragon, and that seemed to put him on the same level as a High Lord in some ways, at least in terms of how they feared him.

In any case, Mat hardly wanted to be there. He took a deep breath, stepping backward away from the dais. For some reason, he was reluctant to take his eyes off the figure on the stair. Perhaps he could leave without attracting attention, could go on avoiding Rand until he finally managed to talk himself into leaving.

But before Mat could plant his foot, Rand’s head whipped around toward him, his muscles tensing. His fingers tightened around Callandor’s hilt, and Mat froze.

Rand stared at him fiercely for a moment, eyes seeming to pierce his heart like cold steel. Then he sighed and let the sword go.

“Just Mat,” he murmured, sounding almost fond.

“Just me,” Mat agreed, relaxing only fractionally and trying to sound soothing. “And I’ll just… be going. To bed. It’s late.”

Rand hummed, tilting his head. “It is. What are you doing awake?” Mat hesitated, and Rand sighed, looking down at Callandor. “I can’t sleep either.”

“Is it the dreams?” Mat blurted, and Rand looked up again, blinking.

“Dreams?”

So not that, then. Mat hadn’t thought so; his dream had not felt like one of those shared dreams of Ba’alzamon.

“Just nightmares,” he told Rand’s curious face, gruffly adding, “Don’t tell me you don’t have them.”

“Not like before,” Rand sighs. “Not since… this.”

Callandor had cured Rand’s nightmares? Mat wondered if it could do the same for him. Hopefully not, he realized with a shiver; the thing was made for male channelers, after all.

“You look better, though,” Rand observed suddenly, and Mat frowned. “I was surprised you were here. I’d have thought you’d have had your fill of adventures and Aes Sedai.”

“I _have_ had my fill of Aes Sedai,” Mat replied defensively, “but I think adventure agrees with me. I can hardly go back to being a farmer after all this, could I? I’d go mad!”

He flinched even as the last word escaped his lips, but Rand didn’t get angry, only looking away. Mat had another flash of memory: Rand looking down at the dragon banner, all confused desperation. _I was afraid I’d hurt you_ , he had said. _I don’t know how to stop it._

Mat had started the process of cutting Rand out of his heart that night, had snapped something he hadn’t yet believed about Rand no longer being the same man and all but told him to clear off. And as desperate, as confused and terrified as Rand had so clearly been, he had simply taken it—and then gone right on trying to get that damn dagger back, for Mat’s sake.

The man that sits before Mat now seems to have changed a great deal since then, but… _I won’t leave you, no matter what_ , the dream-Rand had said.

“What are your nightmares about?” Rand asked abruptly, interrupting his thoughts.

“You,” Mat blurted, too wrapped up in remembering that part of the dream to filter his reply, and then he got to watch as Rand blinked and curled back in on himself, away from Mat.

“Not like that,” Mat added hurriedly. “You’re in them, but not—you’re not the nightmare.”

Not that he hadn’t had nightmares about Rand, grown hundreds of feet tall like Moiraine outside Baerlon and crushing the Two Rivers beneath his feet, or wielding Callandor or that flaming sword with a blazing fury and no recognition in his eyes at all. But those dreams didn’t feel real, never tugged and frayed at the holes in Mat’s memory the way the dreams of daggers and blindness did.

“What, then?” Rand asked skeptically. “Am I your knight in shining armor, delivering you from the jaws of the dark One?”

“Kind of, actually.” Mat swallowed as Rand frowned at him. “What… what was I like? With the dagger, before… before Moiraine healed me?”

Rand’s confused and slightly suspicious frown deepened, and for a moment he looked so much like the boy from Emond’s Field, wary of being pranked, that it made Mat’s breath catch. “What does that have to with…”

“Nothing,” Mat barked irritably, then took a deep breath and continued more quietly. “Just… just tell me.”

“Alright,” Rand replied hesitantly. “You were… paranoid. But I was paranoid, too, back then—we knew there were Darkfriends hunting us, and we had no way to know who they were. I… I think you stopped eating? I—“

“Light, Rand, that’s not what I meant,” Mat cut him off impatiently. Stopped eating, he said, as if the dagger had been some kind of wasting disease instead of a twisted, cursed thing that had burrowed holes in his mind and curled up there to pull at him like a puppet on a string. “Did I—kill anyone? Hurt anyone?”

“Did—no!” Rand looked almost scandalized. “Light, Mat, if I knew you’d been worried about _that_ —no, you didn’t hurt anyone.”

Mat studied him, scarcely daring to believe the sincerity dripping from the words. Perhaps the nightmare had been just that—a wild amalgam of all his uncertainty and fear.

“I thought…” he said, voice shaky with relief, or maybe wonder. “I remember being so angry, and afraid, and—with that dagger…”

He blinked at Rand, who suddenly looked hesitant again.

“What?” Mat asked. “What aren’t you telling me, Rand? Don’t bloody lie, not about—“

“I didn’t!” Rand protested. “ _You_ didn’t—you wanted to, but…”

“You stopped me,” Mat realized, and Light, the dream _had_ been real. “You held my wrist, and…”

“No,” Rand interrupts, confused. “No, I just asked—it was Lan that held you, when you tried to cut Moiraine. You were hardly even you, right before she healed you—you kept muttering about Perrin and Nynaeve and Egwene having changed…”

“Moiraine?” Mat asked hoarsely. He had _hated_ the woman in the dream, had been sure that to kill her would solve all of his problems. Moiraine may have been Aes Sedai, may have managed to lie like a rug despite that— it counted as lying even if she didn’t speak an untrue word— but she was on their side as much as anyone could be. And he had tried to _kill_ her. “She’s never… she doesn’t…”

Rand shrugged. “It’s like you said, I guess. She wouldn’t hold you to blame for what you did when you were crazy.”

Mat _had_ said that, all the way back in Caemlyn. It sounded different now, especially coming from Rand, and Mat paused, searching for any hinting in the words, any subtle entreaty. He thought the lack of it made him feel even guiltier than its presence would have.

As he thought back over Rand’s words, though, something else stopped him short.

“What do you mean, you just asked?”

“I—there was a Darkfriend on the road to Caemlyn—well, there were a whole barrelful really, but this one, she tried to kill you with this cursed knife.” He hesitated, looking at Mat’s expression, and continued. “I could tell you wanted to kill her, but when I said you shouldn’t, you listened.”

“As easy as that?” Mat asked, wondering.

“I _couldn’t_ have stopped you, if you’d really tried,” Rand said. “I was too sick. You took care of me,” he added softly, eyes crinkling almost fondly. “You weren’t so bad, Mat. Mostly, I think it just made you… scared.”

Mat remembered that fear, in the dream and in the foggy space that served as his recollection of their time between Whitebridge and Caemlyn. In some ways, it wasn’t so different from what he felt now, with shadowspawn and Forsaken lurking around every corner and Tarmon Gaidon and the bloody Horn waiting beyond them all.

“Good thing it’s gone, then,” he said lightly. “Don’t have time to be scared, now.”

“No,” Rand agreed, and it’s as though the months and revelations have returned all at once, an unseen crown coming to rest on his head and the world settling on his shoulders. “No, I suppose we don’t.”

Mat suppressed a shudder. _Add the bloody Dragon brooding behind every door to that list_ , he thought.

Nodding, he turned to leave. Rand was silent, though Mat half-expected to hear that haughty, solemn voice calling him back at any moment. Another part of him expected a different voice to call out, the guilty boy’s voice he had heard back in Emond’s Field on the rare occasions Rand had managed to offend him in the throes of an argument.

And just like that, he was remembering again—the man’s voice, but desperate like the boy’s, calling Mat’s name to warn him of phantom Darkfriends, calling out to their missing companions and begging to keep that heron-marked sword as if it were his last anchor in a storm.

Finally, quiet and utterly lost: _Who am I? Tell me, please. Who am I?_

 _You’re Rand al’Thor, with the ugliest face and the thickest head in the Two Rivers,_ Mat had answered, crouched close to Rand and holding a cup of water to his lips. Mat had been scared then, too, but not of Darkfriends. For those long hours, that whole horrible night, his greatest fear had been that Rand would die and Mat would be left alone, left without the one person on that hellish road that he’d known he could trust.

Rand had looked so comforted at Mat’s words, his whole face sinking into blissful relief for a moment, before it had slipped gently into the blankness of sleep. His breaths had finally begun to come easier then, and it seemed the danger had passed and that Mat, too, could finally relax.

“Mat?”

The call now was soft, no fear or summons in it—the voice of the man, not the boy or the king. Mat turned from where he had stopped short in the doorway, taking in the sight of Rand again.

His friend hadn’t come after him, was still sitting perched on the stair and curled just slightly over that bloody sword. Despite the evenness of his voice, he was pale, exhaustion etched into every line of his body and painted dark under his eyes. Even more, though, there was a sort of defeat in his stillness, an unfulfilled longing in the way he tilted his head at Mat in concern. It was the morosely expectant posture of a dog that had been trained not to lick or jump with kicks in place of kindness, and it made Mat’s throat tighten.

 _I won’t leave you no matter what,_ Rand had said, and he’d kept his word for as long as it was in his power.

Mat had made no such promise, and yet without thinking he found himself walking purposefully back toward Rand, who tensed, eyes widening, before sighing as Mat sat down on the stair to his right. After a moment, Mat moved up a stair so that their eyes were at the same level.

“What are _you_ doing awake, then? And in here?”

Rand hesitated, eyes flickering to Mat’s face and then away.

“I can’t sleep,” he began slowly. “Not while I’m just… sitting here, waiting for someone to strike. Moiraine wants me to start a war with Illian, did you know?” He looked incredulously at Mat, who blinked back, unsure how his face looked. So many rumors had Rand planning a strike on Illian that he wasn’t surprised, exactly. Rand sighed and looked down at Callandor.

“Maybe she’s right. I want to surprise them, to be unpredictable, but it won’t matter if I get killed sitting around reading books, will it? But I don’t _want_ to start a war, Mat— I know I will have to, the prophecies all say that nations will break before the Dragon, but I’m not— I _can’t_ —“

He scrubbed at his face, seeming to press the tension and frustration deeper with every motion. “The Stone… I dreamt of it so often, of it and Callandor. One night I woke and found I’d walked three miles in my sleep, it called so strongly. It was so simple— I would come to Tear and draw Callandor, slay Ba’alzamon and be done with it— or better, I’d try for Callandor and fail, and it would be done that way, too.”

“ _Better_ — failure would have meant the defenders killed you!”

Rand shrugged. “If they could have killed me before I took the sword, I couldn’t have been—I would just have been Rand al’Thor, one more madman channeler.”

And those _needed_ to be put down. Mat didn’t suppress the shiver that time. Rand spoke of that alternative almost longingly.

“You _are_ Rand al’Thor,” he said finally. “Maybe you’re not exactly the same as you were when we left Emond’s Field, but… none of us are, really.”

Rand sucked in a breath as if to reply, then hesitated. “I—Mat, I would know if I were mad, wouldn’t I?”

 _Light_ , Mat should have left when the going was good.

Instead, he bumped Rand’s shoulder roughly with his own. “Of course you’d know. If nothing else, you’d hear it from one of us quick enough.”

“…Would I?” Rand asked, because of course he did. Rand could never leave well enough alone. “The high lords, most of them think I am—but they go where I point them more easily than those who think I’m sane. Everyone’s scared of me, no matter how they hide it.”

Mat opened his mouth to deny it, then stopped at the look Rand gives him.

“Fine!” he said. “Fine. Of course I’m scared, Rand. You can _channel_ , and I can’t even bloody _leave_. I’d be a Light-blessed fool if I wasn’t afraid and you know it.”

He would have expected Rand to be angry at that, or hurt, but instead his friend’s face twisted into a small smile, wry but genuine.

“At least you’re honest about it,” he said. “You and Perrin. Egwene and Elayne keep trying to insist that they’re not afraid even when I’ve terrified them into embracing _saidar_ , and Moiraine almost has me convinced she _isn’t_ afraid, sometimes.”

“You know me,” Mat replied blithely, “honest to a fault.”

Rand laughed softly, and after a moment Mat joined him. He’d been the best liar out of the three of them, back in Emond’s Field, except that by the time he’d turned fifteen the entire village knew better than to trust anything Mat Cauthon said with an innocent face.

After a moment, though, Rand sobered.

“You don’t have to stay,” he said quietly. “Here, tonight, I mean. I’m sorry, I can’t do anything about the Pattern, but I don’t think it’ll stop you from avoiding me as long as you stay in Tear.”

Mat considered the way his feet had unconsciously led him here, considered the fact that the defenders must have let him in without a word, and was not so sure. But with an effort of will, he put that thought aside, along with a small knot of embarrassment— of course Rand had known Mat was avoiding him— and listened to what Rand _meant_ and not just what he said.

 _You don’t have to stay_ , like he was releasing Mat from a burden, and _I’m sorry_ —but not _I’ll be fine_ , nothing about how Mat leaving would affect Rand, only a reassurance that it would not hurt Mat. As if he simply expected Mat to leave him without a care, and despite that wanted to make it as easy as possible.

“Shut up,” Mat told him, not stuffing down the offense in his tone. “Of course I have to stay.”

Rand blinked at him. “What—“

“I wouldn’t be much of a friend if I just left you here,” Mat said airily, as though the words didn’t contradict everything he’d tried to convince himself of over the last few months.

At that Rand’s eyes widened. Then his face darkened again, and he looked away. “I shouldn’t—“

“Have friends?” Mat asked scornfully. “Sounds like a good way to go crazy even faster to me. Remember that old hermit back in the Two Rivers—Aeric?”

“Mad as a hatter,” Rand recalled, smiling slightly.

“See?” Mat asked. “It seems to me that you can’t afford to turn me away, if I want to be here.”

“You want—“ Rand stuttered, gaping at him, then shook his head, a smile creeping in at the corners of his mouth. “I— _Light,_ Mat, I missed you.”

“Of course you did,” Mat replied haughtily, pretending not to notice the tears in Rand’s eyes. Gesturing at Callandor, he added, “put that thing down.”

Wonder of wonders, Rand didn’t question. He simply lifted the sword from his lap and placed it on the stair at his side.

As soon as he’d released the thing’s hilt, Mat reached out roughly and pulled him into a tight hug.

“You couldn’t get rid of me if you tried, you great lump,” he murmured into Rand’s hair, closing his eyes against Callandor’s glow. The light seeped through his eyelids and colored the world the same pulsing red as his dreams, and he tightened his arms against Rand’s shuddering form.

 _Light, he_ does _need me_ , Mat thought. He’d been so afraid— of Aes Sedai, of his own strange powers and his mind betraying him, of his ta’veren nature trapping him and of the bloody Dragon— that he hadn’t quite realized how terrified Rand must be of all the same things.

“I _did_ try,” Rand replied contrarily, but his voice wavered dangerously. “And you did want to leave.”

Mat opened his eyes just to roll them up at the heavens. Mulish to the end, that was Rand. “Sure, but I came back, didn’t I?”

Trembling, Rand’s arms finally closed around Mat’s waist. “You did,” he choked, voice cracking, and then, “ _thank you._ ”

“Yeah,” Mat replied quietly, shutting his eyes against that unearthly glow once again. Rand was warm and solid beneath his hands, and Mat stroked an arm down his back and sighed. “Yeah.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'd love if you commented below, or hit me up on [tumblr](http://radiantmists.tumblr.com) where I'll probably be continually screaming about WoT until a few months after the show comes out at least!


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